Soon you will reenter
this room. You will be showered,
shaved, zipped. But for now
a fractal warmth fills
my porcelain cup, fills my touch,
my skin’s minutest whorls.
Reddening capillaries
activate god knows what
goddess within:
my sweet depths
where you lose yourself—
our gasps, the glow
of your skin against mine.
Where do we go then
only to return, dazed,
mussed, and set dreamily
musing, so permeable
to light passing through
these reversible blinds
I can barely reassemble myself
to sit here, to hold, trace,
infer with my pattern of prints
this patterned, heat-bearing
wall? Oh, soft, most flexible pads
enabling me to be known
and to know: radiance—
from a mug of tea!—
and the way blood carries
messages, crosses
pulse points, oxygenates itself
so that even at my fingertips
I sense my transpiring
breath, but feel no sweat, nothing
remarkable, just everyday touch,
I/you, the warmth only our bodies
can teach us, this throbbing
reaching out, this hunger
not to be alone in our
unremarkable hearts.